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Right before Christmas, KDE has published the first candidate for the upcoming release of KDE 4.6.0. The focus at this stage is on fixing bugs and completing translations and artwork. As such, the rework of the Oxygen icon set is nearing completion, many bugs reported by testers in the past weeks have been fixed and stabilization is still in full swing.

What do the Linux Foundation, Free Software Foundation, and Apache Project all have in common? They provide a cover for businesses and projects that want to use open source software and contribute to the FOSS community without the risk of stepping on legal landmines or giving up a competitive advantage.

Associate members of the Free Software Foundation form a dedicated part of the community: a free software society that supports the ethical cause of computer users' freedom.. If you support the goal of a free software society, please join with your peers around the world in taking this important step.

KDE e.V. is pleased to announce that we have joined the Open Invention Network community as a licensee. Open Invention Network was founded as a way to help defend the Linux ecosystem, and by extension much of the Free and Open Source software world, from the risks associated with software patents.

The X.Org Foundation and the global community of X.Org developers announce the release 7.6 of the X Window System. This release is the seventh modular release of the X Window System. The next full release will be X11R7.7 and is expected in 2011. X11R7.6 supports GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, MacOS X, Microsoft Windows and GNU Hurd systems.

When the Free Software Foundation’s executive director, Peter Brown, visited the Google offices last week, he graciously offered his time for an interview with Samba co-founder and Open Source Programs Office team member Jeremy Allison. Peter and Jeremy spoke for quite a while about several of the hot topics facing free software today.

We would like to see the European Commission back up its public rhetoric regarding Free Software, Open Standards and interoperability with its own actions. This would require DIGIT to rethink some procurement practices in order to open up public software procurement to competition.

The Debian project has been working in removing non-free firmware from the Linux kernel shipped with Debian for the past two release cycles. At the time of the releases of Debian 4.0 "Etch" and 5.0 "Lenny", however, it was not yet possible to ship Linux kernels stripped of all non-free firmware bits.

Reviewer's verdict: I think digiKam is the best open source photo management tool out there. It's robust, powerful and best of all, it has API interface (which I have yet to try!). There also exists a more user-friendly interface, Showfoto - which most users will find very attractive.

RMS recently called our attention to the Homeland Security Cyber and Physical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2010. This bill, currently being considered in a House subcommittee, has the potential to threaten free software.

In late 2009, Antonis Tsiapaliokas had his first contact with Linux. At that time, he had just started learning the C programming language and he was mostly unfamiliar with KDE software. Less than two years later, he just made his first code contributions to KDE software. Read on to find out more on how Antonis became a KDE developer.

"By working on and using GNU rather than proprietary programs, we can be hospitable to everyone and obey the law. In addition, GNU serves as an example to inspire and a banner to rally others to join us in sharing. This can give us a feeling of harmony which is impossible if we use software that is not free.

The Apache Software Foundation concludes that that JCP is not an open specification process - that Java specifications are proprietary technology that must be licensed directly from the spec lead under whatever terms the spec lead chooses; that the commercial concerns of a single entity, Oracle, will continue to seriously interfere with and bias the transparent governance of the ecosystem; that i